It all started with The Jam logo... Well actually it all started many years before that, 1966 to be exact when I was 15 years old and not only discovered how much music meant to me but how much the album covers meant too. The Beatles Revolver album had some great pop tracks including one of my favourite songs - For No One - my first love began and ended that summer while I played that song constantly. The album also had a great sleeve by Klaus Voormann which, I found intriguing, with its line drawn portraits mixed with a photo-collage of the band. I was hooked and knew even then that I wanted to be part of this - I was never going to be a brilliant musician but maybe I could be involved with creating the images that went with the music. I spent so many happy hours in my local record store with headphones on in a booth, listening to the latest releases like Neil Young's After the Gold Rush album, studying the covers, reading the lyric sheets. I loved the stories, the unlimited possibilities to link pop and culture. The fact that it would always be there on the shelf for as long as the particular album was listened to and even longer when stored in a dusty cellar years after the record was no longer on the turntable. From that point on all roads led to Polydor Records and the first Jam album cover in 1977. During the 70's and 80's a number of new graphic designers found their way into the music business, Barney Bubbles' brilliant work for Stiff Records, Storm Thorgesen's Hipgnosis Pink Floyd covers, Malcolm Garrett's Buzzcocks sleeves, Stylorouge and Siouxsie and the Banshees, Form Design amongst many others, all helping to create a paradigm of album cover design, I joined these serried ranks in 1976. I had been at Polydor for a year or so as Art Director creating covers for artists as diverse as Peggy Lee, The Who and George Benson, I hadn't yet reached my nirvana but Nevermind... along came The Jam. A new band with new music to share and me with a 12-inch blank canvas to fill with ideas. An Art Director is a really great job, you come up with ideas with an artist and then you find amazing people to collaborate with and in partnership you make those ideas come to life. I ended up doing 5 album covers and 16 single bags for The Jam between 1977 and 1980, 3 short years of joy. I left Polydor in 1978 and set up my own studio in what was basically a corridor in a fashion house on Great Marlborough Street in London's West End. From that little cubby-hole I started working with many different record companies and many different bands and artists. Album covers are permanent items, unlike much packaging which is thrown away once the product is removed, the album cover becomes a possession and has a value beyond just protection. They are a collaboration and a partnership between musician, designer and record company. There are arguments and compromises, certainly many fights but in the end, the cover wins out. There have been many great art directors and designers, artists, photographers and typographers all helping to create cardboard packaging for some black vinyl, creating great, mediocre or downright rubbish sleeves, but always interesting and exciting. Between 1976 and 2019 we worked with over 200 different bands and artists, creating many hundreds of covers, all with a story... the book covers (sorry) just some of them.

Bill Smith's introduction to winemaking happened when he worked in California, where he visited wineries in the Napa Valley. Back in England, he became a keen amateur winemaker. Adapting his skills as a research scientist in anaerobic fermentation to winemaking, the author soon became a prize-winner at shows, furthering his interest in the hobby by becoming a National Wine Judge He wrote this book for winemakers at all levels; all aspects of home winemaking are discussed from the basic equipment to the Wine Clubs that are the backbone of this widespread hobby. It gives the author's own views on methods that will improve on standard winemaking techniques and concludes with a selection of over fifty recipes from him and his winemaking friends.

Includes solutions to all of the problems at the end of each chapter. Written deliberately without the use of calculus or advanced mathematics to explain the practical engineering principles and design choices in AC circuits involving capacitors, inductors and transformers. After a review of alternating current in circuits, topics include types of inductors (core selection, types of windings, size) and their behavior in different types of circuit configurations. The next topic is capacitors and how they function, including something seldom discussed - a look at how different types of capacitors vary in functionality in circuits (ceramic, mica, paper, electrolytic, variable, etc.) This leads into the topic of inductive and capacitve reactance, and impedance (calculations in a circuit and balancing stages). The next section is on transformers, including power transformers as well as audio and RF types (subsections include operating principles, core selection, types of windings, the effect of loads, mutual flux, transformer losses, efficiency rating, like- and unlike-wound transformers, etc.) Concludes with an appendix, glossary of terms and index of topics.

Crabs and oysters take center stage as Chef Bill Smith conveys his passion for preparing these sumptuous shellfish long associated with southern coastlines. Smith's sensibilities as a North Carolinian born and raised down east are vibrantly on display as he recalls the joy of growing up catching crabs and shucking oysters. Smith traveled the coastline, visited with crab fishermen and oyster farmers, and dove deep into a library's worth of regional cookbooks and collections of heirloom recipes from seaside communities, notably in North Carolina and Louisiana. His collection of fifty recipes, organized by courses, ranges from simple, everyday preparations to elaborate ones suitable for fancy parties. From Crabmeat Cobbler, Roasted Oysters, and Hard-Crab Stew with White Cornmeal Dumplings, to Crabmeat Ravigotte and Oyster Shortcake, cooks will find a succulent recipe for every occasion. The book includes seasonal selection information and detailed cleaning and preparation instructions for hard- and soft-shell crabs and oysters.

Ancient books in a monastery ... a code left by Nazi soldiers ... a deep fjord ... and a mysterious stainless steel cylinder-all lead to a fantastic war-time discovery.The one hundred thousand ancient books in the Great Library of the Benedictine monastery were just part of the majestic beauty of Austria's 12th century Melk Abbey. But that beauty was marred when the monks discovered that scores of valuable books had been marked and disfigured by persons unknown. Wilhelm Gerhard was retained to find the cause. With help from his friend Wolf and 100 monks in black habits, they examined every volume in all 12 rooms of the library and even searched the rock catacombs deep under the 900-year-old abbey where the screaming Will-o'-the-Wisp lived. They discovered that the marks were a code left by Nazi soldiers during the Second World War. The deciphered code leads to a stainless-steel box hidden in an old stone ventilation shaft. Scratched on a piece of slate inside was a set of coordinates to the location of a fantastic war time secret-one lost for over 70 years in the Sognefjord, Norway's longest and deepest fjord-and one that leads directly to the demented mind of Adolf Hitler himself. If Nazi Germany had won the war, Hitler's secret would have forever altered the course of human destiny by undoing the handiwork of the Lord himself.